Issue 32, Spring 2007

William A. McEachern, Editor

Odds and Ends

The AEA's website for undergraduate economics is now up at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AEA/students/index.htm. According to the introduction, "This website provides an overview of the skills, the literature, and the issues found in modern economics. It also provides information about careers, graduate study, and other opportunities for undergraduates." Ten economists developed the site, with Malcolm Getz of Vanderbilt as site director (he has also directed undergraduate studies in economics at Vanderbilt since 1996). The home page links to some original material, such as "What Is Economics," and to many economic sites. More than a dozen major headings link to a variety of resources. For example, "Programs" connects to hundreds of undergraduate economics programs in the United States and Canada. "Fields" presents the JEL classification system with links to 24 field descriptions in Wikipedia. "Opportunities" offers sources for summer study and research, and outlets for presentations. And "Skills" explores the talents needed to succeed in economics, including a section on writing well. The AEA site will become a must-stop for undergraduates interested in the discipline.

Who is the richest person ever to have earned a graduate degree in economics? Warren Buffet has an M.A. in economics from Columbia in 1951. Someone who invested $10,000 in Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, when Buffet took control, would now be worth more than $50 million. Worth $42 billion in the latest Forbes listing (second to the $50 billion of Bill Gates, a Harvard dropout), "The Sage of Omaha" and huge philanthropist still lives in the house he bought three decades ago for $31,500 and until last September still drove a 2001 Lincoln Town Car (it has since been sold at a charity auction for $73,200).

The San Francisco Fed's educational resources include "Ask Dr. Econ" at http://www.frbsf.org/education/activities/drecon/askecon.cfm. The search engine tries to find a match for any question by answering a similar question that has been asked in the past. But it's pretty crude. My questions yielded answers that were not really close.

The first-ever National Assessment of Educational Progress in Economics was administered to students in grade 12 from January to March 2006. If the reporting follows the recent exams in science, test results will become available sometime this spring.

RateMyProfessors.com is being acquired by MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, which also owns MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central.

The full set of Milton Friedman's video series "Free to Choose" is now available for free at http://www.ideachannel.tv. Included are both the 1980 original series and the 1990 updates, with an introduction by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"The seeker of truth should be humbler than the dust. Only then, and not 'til then, will he have a glimpse of truth."-Gandhi

"I find it useful to remember that everybody lives by selling something."-Robert Louis Stevenson

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."-Charles Darwin

Acknowledgments: For helpful comments on a draft of this issue, I thank John Carey, Sarah Greber, Dennis Hanseman, Charles Martie, Stephen Miller, and Susan Smart.

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